Saving All the Stars
by Aydin's One
Summary: He wished he could save every star from the sky that night. Reposted. CD foes need not worry... too much.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own CSI, these characters, any airline or airport, or a news station. Also, this is not based on any actual event, so any similarities are completely coincidental and without intent. If I did own any of the above, I'd be slipping TPTB a couple C-notes under the table

A/N: Very special thanks to gabesaunt, the bestest beta in the world!!! And some special love for my hubby, who listened to me whine about my dilemma in writing this. This is going to be the pit of despair for certain characters. Please read the category before proceeding.

"_We're bringing you breaking local news now live on Channel Seven…" _Click

To Gil Grissom, there was no such thing as breaking news in Las Vegas. If he didn't know the news before the media outlets did, then it probably wasn't that "breaking" in the first place. The interference from the media only made his job worse, and Grissom sought to limit it whenever he could. He rarely watched the evening news, avoided reporters like the plague, and tried to keep their version of events from interfering with the interpretation of the evidence.

Grissom stared down at his cell phone sitting on the counter separating his kitchen and living room as he threw his jacket over his shoulders. It hadn't rung.

Of course, on a night off, Grissom would be the last person called into graveyard shift unless it involved bugs or a decomp. Breaking news, or whatever the media deemed newsworthy, usually brought out the entire shift, if for nothing else than to give the media the appearance of a big story unfolding. The phone remained silent, though. No missed calls, no voice mails, no text messages.

He picked up the phone and opened it up, scrolling back to the last saved text message in the file:

_Hey- leaving NYC. Will call when I get in – S_

Grissom smiled at the message. Sara's first teaching seminar on material analysis had been cut short at Columbia University, due to some scheduling errors on the college's part, and he was glad to have her home as soon as possible. Grissom hoped that her flight would land shortly, and they would be able to spend some time together that night. Having the same night off was rare, even with the greater effort to limit overtime, and he would take any second he could spend with her. The six month mark of their strangely functional relationship passed without a proper celebration. She hadn't been one for counting days and events, but if at least for his sake, he was determined to make it up to her.

Grissom checked the lights and the coffee pot one last time, and headed out the door, shutting it and carefully locking it behind him. It made no sense to sit around the townhouse and wait for Sara's plane to get in while the rest of the team would likely be tossed into a media frenzy. The fact that Brass hadn't even _called_ him to tell him what was going on also irritated him, and if Brass wasn't going to find him, he'd have to find someone who knew what was going on. _Perhaps it isn't anything involving crime_, Grissom thought, as he unlocked his vehicle and climbed in. But on what day in Vegas does something not involve crime?

The lab was eerily quiet, not in the sense that everyone was busy or in the field. The building had a strange aura around it. Everyone seemed on edge, and Grissom wandered through the hallway, squinting his eyebrows in confusion at the nervousness that seemed to be ingrained in lab techs and administrative staff. The work seemed to be getting done, but their demeanor was… off. David Hodges strode past Grissom, staring at a paper that couldn't have had more than a few words on it.

"Good evening, Hodges."

"Hi, Grissom," was his reply, and the lab tech continued down the hallway. Grissom halted dead in his tracks and turned towards the normally annoying scientist. Hodges never turned around or offered a witty remark, something that was rarely seen in him.

Baffled, Grissom turned and headed towards his office, passing the A/V lab. The door was open and Archie sat on a stool, leaning his head onto his hands. From the looks of it, his hands were sealed as if they were in prayer, and the normally cheerful young man was somber and silent.

"Hey, Archie." Archie merely turned his head towards Grissom, nodded, and then turned back to the screen he was watching. _Either he's really intent on his work,_ he thought_, or something odd is happening._

Grissom opened the door to the break room, which sat his entire team of CSIs, minus Sara, of course. Greg and Nick stared at the television, as if they were studying a piece of evidence. Warrick had rested his forehead between the pads of his fingers, and Catherine stood next to him, sharing a look at the television, and then shaking her head rather sadly.

"Catherine?" Grissom whispered, as he quietly slipped into the room. She turned towards him. "What's going on?"

"Don't you ever watch the news Gil?" Grissom shook his head slightly.

"I find that I get more accurate information from all of you than tragedy T.V." Catherine conceded that point with a slight nod of her head.

"Well, this is just nuts and we're waiting on instructions. We're kind of under the F.B.I.'s and the F.A.A.'s jurisdiction right now. Who knows if they'll let us out in the field for this." Catherine looked Grissom over. "You still don't know what's going on, do you?"

"Well, it would be nice if one of you filled me in." Grissom grinned, and the entire room turned to face him, none returning the smile that he had shared.

Nick coughed a little and stood up, leaving Greg the only one still sitting in the group. His face was sheet white. Grissom wasn't sure if the young CSI even _could_ stand up at this point.

"I guess about thirty minutes ago, right outside of Henderson," Catherine sighed deeply, "a commercial plane went down. No one really knows how bad the crash is yet. The smoke is thick, and they aren't getting any aerial shots…"

A lump shoved itself into Grissom's throat. _A commercial plane went down…_He hadn't heard anything Catherine said after that. All he could think about was the hundreds of flights coming into McCarran that night, and the incredible odds that it wasn't her plane, it wasn't her plane, it wasn't…

"Gris?" Warrick asked. "Are you ok?" Warrick reached out for Grissom's arm. He felt fine, except for the rock he couldn't quite swallow, and the sheer panic of the situation.

"I'm, uh, I'm fine. Sorry, I just… I turned the news off… and I didn't, I mean. I…" Grissom took a deep breath and reached for a chair. He gently rolled it out and sat himself down slowly. The team drew looks of confusion on their faces and darted their eyes back and forth between each other.

"Gil? Are you sure you are ok?" Catherine bent down towards Grissom.

"Yeah, I just…"

"Do you know someone who's flying in…?" Catherine stopped and stood up sharply. She shot a glance at Warrick, whose green eyes widened in a panic.

"Sara, she's," Greg stammered. "She's, uh, not coming back until Sunday right? That's like two days from…"

"Her seminar wrapped up early. She's on her way home." Grissom cut off Greg, not sharply, but loud enough to startle the group.

"Ok," Nick said, holding his arms out in a calming surrender. "We don't even know yet where that plane came from or if it was even flying into Vegas at the time. The chances that Sara is on that plane are very, very slim." Nick Stokes, ever the logical brain. Greg nodded, though the pale, ghostly complexion was beginning to tint with a greenish hue.

"Ok," Catherine stated, preparing to take charge of whatever situation they were facing, as Grissom remained in an unnatural shock. "I'm going to go find Brass and see if we can find some more information. The rest of you stay here and wait to see if the feds are going to need us out there. They may not want any of our help." She tried to find another sentence, but it was lost on her tongue, and she blazed out of the room, leaving a trail of faint perfume behind. The reporting of the news anchor was the only noise in the break room. Four heads turned to face the monitor mounted on the wall…

"_We now bring this update on the air accident as officials are calling it… it has now been confirmed that the plane that has crashed outside of Henderson was on its way into McCarran International Airport at the time of the accident.."_


	2. Chapter 2

The lump in Grissom's throat was now constricting his airway, making even the weakest sigh difficult. He pulled feverishly at his shirt collar, unsuccessfully fighting the rising panic. He still didn't trust the nightly news, but they had to be sure enough to confirm the source before airing that… right?

Nick had his eyes closed, breathing deeply and fighting to hold his composure, while Greg and Warrick looked over Grissom, and each other, fighting the nauseating feeling that something had gone terribly wrong. The news of the plane crash was horrifying, but the thought that one of their own could be… could be…

"I need to call her." Grissom rasped, in a slight wail that made Greg's lip begin to tremor. Genuine fear was not an emotion they had seen in Grissom, and no one bothered to question how his relationship with Sara had evolved the past few months. They had all seen the twinkle in his eye, the way he smiled more, and his limited time spent working overtime. Sara's presence had also decreased, and she smiled more than she had in the past couple of years combined. It was awful to see their happiness on the brink of tragedy, even if their fears became unfounded.

"If she's in flight on a plane, she probably won't have her cell on." Warrick tried to reason.

"I need to talk to her; I need to know she's…" Grissom ran his hand across the sweat beads forming on his brow and back through his graying hair. He picked up his cell phone and held down the key to speed dial her phone. Number three, it was, the number for her speed dial, which he had said stood for the three words he should have been telling her for years. She had just smiled at him, and he would do anything to see that smile, right in front of him.

As the phone started to ring into her line, Grissom rose up out of his chair and exited into the hall for a bit of privacy. He walked over to the wall next to the drinking fountain and rested the palm of his free hand against the cool plaster.

"Sara, come on, please pick up. Honey, please…" Grissom begged in a desperate whisper, as the rings kept sounding. A click sprung a glimmer of hope in him, only to be followed by her voice mail, so professional, yet so much, her.

"_You've reached the voice mail of Sara Sidle, CSI III, Las Vegas Crime Lab. Please leave a message and I will return your call shortly."_

Grissom sighed. _Damn_, he swore in his thoughts, as the beep progressed into the recording phase.

"Sara, honey, it's me. Please, please call me back as soon as you get this. It's really important sweetheart, I don't care where you are just please let me know when you get this message. I love you, I do. I don't say that enough, just… please. See you soon." Grissom apprehensively closed the phone and turned to see Catherine and Brass standing next to him.

"You love her." Catherine asked. It wasn't meant to be a question, and it wasn't mean to be sarcastic, and Grissom didn't take it that way. Still, it was an awkward sight to see Grissom hurting. He opened his mouth and gaped at her, but couldn't bring the words to the surface. Catherine was hurting, too, for Sara and for him, and the sympathy would have to go without acknowledgement for now.

"Any, uh," he cleared his throat. "Any news, Jim?" Brass looked defeated, as if the news that Sara might be involved in this accident had knocked the wind completely out of his sails.

"No, I, uh… I just heard about Sara. I'm sorry, buddy, I really…" Grissom's glare knocked Brass's train of thought off its tracks.

"Why are we sorry? We don't know anything. For all we know Sara never even got on a plane, ok?"

"I know, I know." Brass hurried. "But I mean, I didn't know you two were, you know… seeing each other. Outside of work, for a change." Grissom stared at the ground and took a deep breath.

"I went to her apartment about six months ago, and told her I didn't want to be without her." Catherine and Brass recoiled a little, slightly stunned by Grissom's latest confession. He lifted his head from the ground and looked in their eyes for a long few seconds.

"Excuse me," he whispered, and retreated towards his office. Catherine and Brass stood in a solemn silence and watched Grissom meander towards his office door.

He fumbled with the key a few times, fighting off a nervous shake in his hands and finally unlocked the door. The room was dimly lit from the small heat lamps that sustained experiments and small plants. Grissom never bothered to turn another light on, opting to follow in behind the desk and sit in the dark and cold room. A hint of migraine pressure had begun to build up beneath his temples, and he did his best to rub it away with his knuckles. The pain eased up slightly, but the nausea from dread was rising out of his stomach.

The keys from the door had been flung on his desk, and Grissom picked them up and sorted them until his fingers grasped a smaller silver key. He slid the key into the lock on the second desk drawer, smoothly unlocked it, and pulled the metal handle. Grissom pulled his lips between his teeth, biting back any raw emotion that had failed to keep its distance from him. A small blue velvet box sat in between a tape dispenser and a box of latex gloves. He resisted the temptation to glove his hands first, and he picked the box up out of the drawer. Grissom rested the edge of his hands on the desk, not allowing the bottom of the box to grace the top of his work area. His fingers pried open the top, revealing a stunning sapphire and diamond ring.

The silver band was embedded with tiny sparkling diamonds and a beautiful sapphire. Its antique appearance drew Grissom to it, and he had thought of Sara immediately. The ring had spent every night in his desk for two weeks, waiting until he had the courage to present it to her. It was the least he could do to prove his intention to spend the rest of his life embracing her beauty.

He had all the time in the world. She would keep waiting on him.

He kept telling himself that as he shut the box and pinched his eyes shut tightly. Grissom had seen plane wreckage and the terrifying balls of fire that the fuselage and a few chunks of metal created when slammed into the ground. He knew the chances of surviving the most severe of commercial air crashes was slim and none. On the other hand, he still had no idea where that plane had been coming from…

The faint ringing of a cell phone rose Grissom out of his chair. He set the velvet box back in the drawer and pulled his body around the desk. The door was pulled open, exposing Grissom's eyes to more light than they were ready for.

Jim Brass had pulled a cell phone to his ear, and was followed down the hallway by the remainder of the CSI's towards Grissom's dreary office. Brass stopped in front of Grissom, and the others followed around until they had formed a small circle in the hallway.

"What's going on?" Grissom asked, scared to know an answer yet so eager.

"TV's not reporting anything new, and Brass is finally getting some details for us. Reliable ones." Greg's excited charm was only dimmed slightly by the tragedy, but Grissom merely nodded at the young CSI and waited for Brass to finish the call.

"Yeah, uh-huh. I understand." Brass repeated the series of one word phrases to the person on the other end of the line. "I get it now just… oh. Are you sure?" Brass pulled his head up and stared at Grissom.

"Jim, what is it?" Brass waved his free hand at Grissom and continued with the conversation.

"Do we have a flight number yet, a passenger list, hell, which air… ok. What airport? Good. If you hear anything else, call me, thanks." Brass hesitated before shutting the front of his cell phone. A deep sigh overcame the detective.

"Gil," Brass sighed. Grissom's knees weakened and his heart started to race.

"What is it?"

"That plane took off from JFK, bound for McCarran. The crash is about four miles east of Henderson, between the highway and Lake Mead. It's…it's going to be bad." The lump in Grissom's throat sank into his stomach, and he reached out for the door frame for support.

"Do you have any idea what her flight number was?" Catherine inquired. "Airline? Time of departure?" Grissom shook his head.

"She, uh, she didn't tell me. I have no idea." The team was silent, reverent, and shocked by the unlikely turn of events.

"Now we wait," Warrick groaned. Quickly, the group dispersed, setting off to grapple with this setback in their own way.

Left in the doorway was Grissom, who stared down at the floor and at the cell phone in his hand. He flipped it open, checking the messages one more time. Frustrated, he held down the three key and put the phone to his ear.

"_You've reached the voice mail of Sara Sidle…"_


	3. Chapter 3

Catherine's fingers covered her mouth delicately as she read the ticker running across the bottom of the screen. They still didn't know Sara's flight number or airline, time she left the airport, or even if she had made her flight. For all Catherine, and everyone else, knew, Sara was still in New York, delayed due to the inevitable grounding of air traffic.

But the practical side of her knew Sara would have called if her flight had been delayed. She would have let Grissom know she was ok, or at least have her cell phone turned on, waiting for a call. By that time, she would have been told of the crash and realized that they would be worried about her. Maybe Grissom's voice mail hadn't caught up yet, or maybe her phone battery is dead, or maybe…

The door of the breakroom clicked behind her, and she turned around to see that Warrick slipped in the room. Catherine had only seen those fear-filled eyes once: Nick's abduction. But this time, there was no live webcam feed to tell them that Sara was fine. The unknown was the greatest worry.

"Hey, anything else come up on there?" Warrick motioned to the television and the blonde reporter, who was spitting off the same information they had been hearing for the last thirty minutes.

"Not yet. Grissom doing okay?" Catherine pulled her hand away from her lips and watched Warrick pull a chair out from the table.

"Not sure," he replied. "He's still getting Sara's voice mail. Nick and Greg are trying to text her phone and page her." Catherine picked up a small black pager sitting in front of her at the table.

"She won't get a page; she left me her battery to use while she was gone. Mine fell into a drained pool about a week ago while I was collecting a blood sample, shattered into about a zillion pieces." The two awkwardly nodded, realizing that right now a plane was shattered into a zillion pieces in the warm Nevada night, taking with it lives that could never be restored.

Sara's could be one of them.

"Well, I guess I can go tell Nick and Greg they can stop trying… wait." Warrick placed a hand over Catherine's forearm and pointed to the television. "Turn that up a second."

"_Officials from both JFK and McCarran International Airports are now confirming that the plane that has crashed outside of the greater Las Vegas area was an AirWorld Airlines flight. The plane, reported to be a 737 based out of JFK, was carrying 137 passengers on Thursday night when it took off from New York. AirWorld is not yet releasing the flight number, due to last minute changes and cancellations with other flights. Officials say they will release that flight number within the next half hour. Back to our correspondent in Vegas…"_

Warrick batted on the volume button until the annoying voice had subsided somewhat. Each sighed deeply, disappointed at the lack of better news.

The door opened again, this time with a great deal of noise behind it. Nick, Greg, and Brass entered the room in conversation, leaving the door open behind them. Brass cleared his throat.

"Ok, I pulled a couple strings," Brass stated, leaving Nick to grin mischievously. "I got in contact with a source at McCarran. The plane that crashed is an AirWorld Airlines…"

"It's a 737, yeah, we know. News is now reporting that." Catherine interrupted, as Brass held a hand up to her.

"Ah, ah. But I know the flight number. Flight number 5241, JFK to McCarran non-stop. Flight left at 10:55pm eastern time, arriving at McCarran at 1:39am. The plane was making good time, crashed at approximately 1:19am as it descended towards Vegas." Brass flipped his notebook closed, and looked around at the CSI's.

"Was the flight full?" Greg asked. "I mean, if it wasn't full, or if not everyone made the flight, and it does turn out to be Sara's…"

"They're checking the lists in New York. Still tracking down boarding passes." The group nodded.

"Does Grissom know this yet?" Catherine inquired.

"I told him before I came in here. I gave him a toll-free number to call to see if she was on that flight. They should be reporting this on the news shortly; my contact was heading to a press conference as soon as he hung up. He's having a very long night." Brass shook his head.

"Aren't we all?" Warrick huffed. Catherine rose from her chair and headed to the door, turning around as she reached the entrance to the room.

"I'm going to go check on Grissom. Stick around and see if we find out anything else. Thanks, Jim." Brass nodded gravely, using the universal symbol of acknowledgement that seemed to have been established after the news of the crash had spread. Catherine turned and strode down the hallway, and she could hear a muffled argument as she approached Grissom's door.

"No, I've been holding for ten minutes. All I need is for someone to tell me if she was on that flight. Okay, another minute, fine. Thank you." Grissom had emphasized his last words with a hint of sarcasm, and looked up to his door, waving Catherine through.

"On hold for a while?" she asked, sympathetically.

"You could say that. I just need to know." Grissom pulled the speaking end of the phone away from his face, and stared down at the desktop.

"Hey, Gil?" Catherine asked, shifting the balance of her feet. "You know when we have to expense flights and hotels for conferences, we have to reserve them online and send you a carbon copy email confirmation of our flight plan…" She tilted her head and stared at him, waiting for a reaction. With only a short delay, Grissom pulled his head up sharply and displayed a new look of shock. The light had been turned on.

"I never thought about that," he whispered, and sat down in the chair behind him. Grissom opened his email box with a hard click of the mouse, and searched through an electronic pile of Ecklie's garbage memos to find… an unread flight confirmation from AirWorld Airlines.

"It's there…" Grissom murmured as he clicked on it to open. A couple seconds felt like minutes as the page loaded and the text opened up on the screen. Catherine, who was never one to offer privacy as a condolence, slipped behind the desk and peered over Grissom's shoulder.

"Scroll through that, it's probably towards the middle… there. There's her flight plan." She gasped.

_Name: Sidle, Sara_

_Business: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department_

_Destination terminal: LAS_

_Departure terminal: JFK_

_--_

_Flight Booking: B-737-800 AirWorld #5241 _

_Departure Time: 2255EST_

_Arrival Time: 0139PST_

"Oh… God no." Grissom gripped the phone tightly and covered his eyes with his other hand. The chances that she was on _that_ plane had increased dramatically.

Catherine stood up and offered her hand to Grissom's shoulder, more out of her need to stand steady than Grissom's unlikely need for her comfort. She began to breathe again, shallowly, and realized for the first time how grave this situation was. She could see Grissom's lip quivering slightly in the dim lighting coming off the laptop, and she wondered if he could handle this in the closed off state he preferred. Suddenly, he pulled his head up and straightened the phone back to his ear.

"Yes, I'm waiting to find out if someone was on that plane." Pause. "Yes, her flight number was 5241." Longer pause. "Sara Sidle, S-I-D-L-E. That's Sara, without an H." He took a deep breath and continued. "I'm uh, I'm her husband. She's traveling on business, Las Vegas Police Department. Yes. That's correct. Social Security number? Yes, I have it here. Just a moment." Catherine watched Grissom's hands shake while he opened a desk drawer with a small silver key. He pulled a small stack of papers out of the drawer and selected one from that pile, a post-it with a credit card number and a social security number written on it. While Grissom relayed that information to whoever was on the other end of the phone, she peered into the desk drawer and saw a blue velvet box resting in the otherwise emptied drawer.

_An engagement ring_, Catherine thought, and smiled. She had really assumed that Grissom was lying about being her husband already in an attempt to get the necessary information. Sara certainly never spoke of her relatives, and she assumed Grissom was the closest Sara had to next-of-kin. Knowing that Grissom was seriously considering that extra step was a little strange, but a welcome change from the hermit he had previously been.

"Yes… uh-huh." There was a fairly lengthy pause. "No, I, uh… no thanks. Yes, I understand. Of course. Thank you." Grissom pulled the phone down and shut it, pulling it tightly into his hands. He placed the end of it against his lips, and clamped his eyes down tightly. It could have been remorse, it could have been the biggest relief, but whatever it is, Catherine couldn't decipher his emotion at that moment.

"Gil?" she asked. "Did Sara get on that flight?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Gil? What did the airline say?" Catherine repeated, and Grissom took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, bringing his clenched hands down to the desk.

"They, uh," Grissom cleared his throat. "They said she got on the, uh, the plane."

"She didn't…."

"They have the… They have her boarding pass. They offered a number for a grief counselor." He gulped loud enough for Catherine to hear over her soft gasp.

"She's gone," Grissom whispered in a cracked voice, hopeless and defeated. His still shivering hands twirled the cell phone on the desk, pressing on each end and turning it over and over methodically. It was all he could do to hold the tears in, to keep his heart intact. The pattern, the motion, and the phonewhich had smashed his heart into pieces, held his quivering focus.

"Oh God, Grissom, I…" Catherine trailed off and covered her mouth, this time with both hands. The droplets of tears streamed across her fingertips. "I'll, uh, I'll tell the others. I'll be back. God, Gil, I am so..." She gently patted his shoulder, and darted out of the office.

Once the click of the door meeting the frame had sounded, Grissom dropped the cell phone on the desk and put his head in his hands. His eyes pinched shut, and he saw Sara's radiant smile, her chocolate eyes and beautiful brunette strands of hair. His heart pulsed as he thought of the way her skin felt on the ridges of his fingertips and the sweet strawberry smell she emitted after a hot bath. The way her words sounded when she forgave him for all the times she hurt her echoed in his ears. Grissom's mind raced with all the memories of the times he spent making up for her emotional pain, for all the denial.

It was all gone.

Somewhere amidst the reminiscence of her jumping into his arms and wrapping herself around him (he had always wanted to be with someone who would do that), a tear fell out of his eye and splashed onto the desktop. Another fell, followed by yet another salty drop. His body began to tremor rapidly, and the liquid sorrow grew into a mild shower of his pain. Scooting back in the chair, Grissom pulled his head into his lap and cried for his Sara. His Sara.

Catherine's footsteps couldn't take her fast enough to the break room. She swore the teardrops were streaming behind her, catching in her hair as she nearly ran to her coworkers. She found the door, open from where she had left the first time, and each of them standing or sitting in the same spots. Her mouth opened, and they all turned to her, but no sound came out to match their attention.

"Cath, did Grissom get a hold of the airline?" She nodded violently to Warrick's question, and he ran up out of his chair in time to catch her as she broke out into silent sobs.

"DAMMIT!" Nick cried as he threw his fists onto the desk, twice, and turned to face the wall, away from the rest of them. Greg moved to the chair Warrick had vacated and bent to place the top of his head into his hands. Brass merely stared at the ground, lifting a sleeve every few seconds to wipe away the tears he was unsuccessfully fighting.

"I'll notify the sheriff." Brass mumbled, and walked out the door, running smack into Conrad Ecklie. Brass didn't even acknowledge him, or look at him, and squeezed past into the hall, yanking the cell phone out of his brown coat pocket and heading away from the team.

"What's going on?" Ecklie mouthed to Warrick, who had been the only one to look up out of the tears to see the lab administrator in the doorway.

"Excuse me," Warrick whispered to Catherine, and let go of her gently. She turned to see Ecklie standing to their side, and nodded as Warrick followed him into the hall.

"Warrick, does this have something to do with that plane crash?" Ecklie's genuine concern, which seemed to only appear when someone's life was in danger, was only slightly comforting to Warrick. The man's otherwise slimy demeanor seemed to vanish once he sensed a problem.

"Yeah," Warrick sighed. "We just found out Sara was on that flight, coming back from her seminar at Columbia." Ecklie bit his lip and placed his hands on his waist.

"Um, are they sure she actually made the plane?" Warrick nodded.

"Grissom just got a hold of the airline. I would guess that she did, otherwise I'm pretty sure we'd be celebrating, not… not this." Ecklie nodded.

"Well, I haven't heard anything in regards to recovery efforts yet. They are still trying to put the fires out, and the F.A.A. may not want our lab handling this. Especially if one of our own…"

"Yeah, especially if one of our own is on that plane, we'll be out there." Warrick raised his voice. "I'm not going to sit around here and let a bunch of feds that don't give a damn look for Sara's body." His voice cracked a little at the last word, and he raised his fist to his mouth and nose.

"Look, I'll do my best to see what we can do. I doubt we can collect accident evidence, but maybe we can pitch in with victim I.D. I'll talk to the sheriff." Warrick nodded, and Ecklie reached out and patted his arm. "I'm really sorry, but if there's anyone that I know of that's stubborn enough to survive a plane crash…"

Warrick hinted a smile as Ecklie turned and headed back down the dimly lit hallway. As much as he hated to admit it, Conrad Ecklie was right.

A gentle rasp on the door of his office forced Grissom to pull his head out of his hands and wipe the tears off his face with the back of his shirt sleeve. The door inched open, and Ecklie's face appeared in the opening.

"Gil?" he asked.

"Yeah." Ecklie opened the door wider and stepped in, shutting it behind him swiftly.

"I just wanted to tell you that if there is _anything_ I can do for you right now, let me know. I'm… I'm very sorry. I know you two are close." Grissom rose angrily out of his chair.

"Oh, so now you are sorry." He walked around his desk, and his stride forced Ecklie to back towards the door and clumsily open it behind his back. "All the hell you put her through, the humiliation, the suspension, and the arrogance… the _nerve_ you have to come in here to tell me that you are sorry!" Grissom's vocal volume had increased to shouting. Ecklie held up his hands in defense.

"Look, I'm not trying to start an argument,ok? If I had a problem with you and Sidle being together, I would have mentioned it when I found out you were living under the same roof…"

"That was never any of your business."

"I understand that, but it's not like I went looking for it. Look, Gil," Ecklie toned his voice down and leaned into Grissom. "I can't really imagine what you are going through. We'll get some of our guys out there working on recovery…" Grissom squinted.

"I'm going out there." Grissom folded his arms and stared at his supervisor. The tear streaks had left his face, and his emotion had seeped into a stage of bitter anger.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea…"

"GRISSOM!" The two men darted out the door to see Catherine's upper body leaned out the break room door. "Get down here and see this!" Her tone wasn't that of a distraught coworker, and Grissom, though confused, strode with a hustle down the hallway to see what the commotion was about.

"What's going on?" The entire group pointed to the television, and Greg grabbed the remote to increase the volume.

"_New information is coming to us tonight in Las Vegas at the site of a horrific commercial plane crash. A source to our station has given us an unconfirmed report that there may be survivors from this accident. The source stated that after surveying the wreckage, recovery efforts have shifted from identification of victims to the location of possible survivors. Again, this information is not confirmed at this time, but the miraculous finding of survivors from the AirWorld Flight 5241 crash is possible…"_


	5. Chapter 5

Uncertainty. Fear. Confusion. They crept back into Grissom's skin, reminiscent of the emotional turmoil he went through before he started Sara. _Could she really be alive?_, he thought. The threat of getting his hopes up too high kept his emotions in check. As he stared at the reporter on the screen, his attention began to wane. It was only a few months ago…

_Grissom's knuckles steadied over the wood of the apartment door for at least a minute before they made three quick rasps against it. At first, he heard nothing. Finally, the padding of feet approached the door and halted, momentarily, before the wooden divider opened._

"_Hey, am I fired again?" Sara smiled, and Grissom would have smiled back if his nerves weren't in overdrive. "Really, uh, why are you here? I mean, you are, uh, come in." Grissom stepped inside to the small apartment and awkwardly moved out of the way for Sara to shut the door behind him._

"_I, um," he stammered. "I'm not here because of work."_

"_Great," Sara said. "Because I was racking my brain to figure out how I pissed off Ecklie again." Her humor put him at ease, and he was able to chuckle a bit. His right index finger traced the edge of the breakfast bar, giving him a place to focus on while he spoke._

"_I can't do this anymore." Grissom sighed. "I can't keep watching you and knowing how much I've hurt you without apologizing." Sara opened her mouth to speak, but Grissom held his other hand up to her._

"_Grissom, I…"_

"_No, just let me speak, please." She rolled her eyes a bit and turned towards her couch. He followed, and sat down next to her._

"_It's going to take a lot more than 'I'm sorry' to get you to forgive me, and I know that." He grasped her hand tightly, hoping that she couldn't yell, scream, or argue while he held her._

"_What do you think it will take?" Grissom, now speechless, widened his lips and took a deep breath. He brought his other hand up to the brunette strands of hair that framed her cheeks and pulled his forehead to hers._

"_I have no idea what I can give you, but I can't be too late to give anything," he whispered. It was a little cliché, but it worked. They sat there, speaking only through their eyes, and touching only with their fingers. There were no kisses, no more words, just time and healing. It was a start._

He was right, thankfully, that it was a start and not an end. Sara had accepted whatever it was he could offer. It was hard, however, to picture the happiness she had put in his life when his soul was ripped to pieces. His fear of her breaking his heart had come true, and she had never meant to hurt him.

"_We're now taking you live to McCarran International, where a representative from AirWorld Airlines will make an official statement and answer some questions about the Las Vegas crash."_

"Oh, thank God," Catherine stated. "It's about time we get some information that isn't hearsay on this whole thing." Grissom looked down at his feet. He was embarrassed that his mind, which usually worked harder than his heart, still believed that Sara wouldn't survive an airplane crash. He was positive that she was on that plane, and the odds were not in her favor. Deep in his heart, however, he was conflicted. He held on to that tiny bit of hope that she was alive

"Sara's a lucky girl," Nick said, while they waited for the live press conference to start. "And she's got a hell of a lot to live for. She'll be fine." Nick's excessive optimism irritated Grissom a little, but he bit his lip closed and shoved his hands down into his pockets instead of chastising him. Nick wasn't Ecklie, after all.

They all stood in silence, brooding and mourning and praying all the same, and waited for the conference to begin. Finally, a man in a black suit appeared in front of the microphone-laced podium. Grissom held his breath.

"_As you know, AirWorld Airlines flight number 5241 crashed very early this morning just east of Henderson, NV, from New York's John F. Kennedy airport…"_

"Oh come on, we already know this, man," Warrick whined, and Greg turned around with a finger to his lips.

"…_we are aware that early reports indicated the possibilities of survivors. The fire has been subsided and rescue workers are now working feverishly to locate and extricate passengers from the wreckage. At this point, we have not located any passengers or crew members that have survived this tragedy. So far, we have not located any reason for the crash. Terrorism, though unlikely, is still a possibility…"_

"But they didn't say there wouldn't be, right? I mean, that there wouldn't be survivors?" Nick clarified. Grissom pulled his lips tighter between his teeth and bit back his frustrations.

"No," Brass sighed. "I don't know, lemme see if we can get anywhere near that plane." He pulled out his cell phone and dialed, walking into the hall once someone picked up on the other end.

Grissom turned around towards the wall of the break room, facing away from the group. He had never been one to publicly display his emotions, and the rollercoaster evening was chipping away at his control.

"Damn." Grissom swore under his breath. His fists clenched deep in his pockets. On his lip, he could taste the blood from biting so hard. The airline representative was still speaking, but his voice was shuttled deep into the background of Grissom's thoughts. Fear had taken over, and he didn't want to hear another word from the media.

All he wanted to hear was Sara's sweet singing. That low humming, the soundtrack of her life, would echo through the hallways, drawing her near to him. When she moved to his townhouse, the notes of her joy would echo off the uncovered pipes running across the ceilings. It was beauty.

But now, he couldn't remember her voice.

"…_as for questions, they will be answered at a later conference when we have more information. As I said, crews are searching now for survivors. After that, we will be able to determine the cause of the crash. Our thoughts and prayers go to all the victims and families of this horrible tragedy. Thank you."_

Luckily, the station tuned out the onslaught of asinine questions from the media that followed their request to hold them. Nick grabbed the remote and muted the set, leaving nothing but the high-pitched buzz of the electronics to echo in their ears.

"Grissom?" Nick asked, and after a short pause, Grissom turned around to face him.

"Yes, Nick?"

"Why didn't y'all tell any of us that you and Sara are together?" His question had the familiar tint of annoyance in it. "We make our living trying to figure these things out, and I don't think any of us had a clue."

"Frankly, it's none of your business," Grissom replied. "What we do at work is work, and our relationship doesn't change that." _Our relationship_. Just the sound of the words eased his nerves slightly. Nick shrugged his shoulders at that.

"Whatever, Grissom. I just think we should have at least known. We're your friends, you know."

"Do you pry into all your friends' bedrooms?" Nick jutted out his jaw in a half-laugh and threw his hands up in defense.

"Hey now, I wasn't asking about that, I mean…" The blush rose up the Texan's cheeks, and Greg and Warrick struggled to stifle their giggles. Catherine merely stared at the ground, trying to keep a straight face. Even Grissom had a problem not smiling at the rosy embarrassment, forgetting momentarily about the gravity of the situation.

"C'mon," Nick said, patting Grissom on the shoulder. "She'll be fine, you just wait and see." Grissom stared into Nick. The young man's kidnapping had been one the most horrific ordeals either of them had ever encountered, and Nick's optimism likely stemmed from the pit of despair (literally and figuratively) from which he had been saved.

"Thank you," Grissom said, barely above a whisper and with a crack in each word. Before he could voice another word, the break room door opened and Jim Brass's head poked into the room.

"I need everyone," he panted. "We've got jurisdiction to help with DNA and victim ID." The group, except for Grissom, nodded with approval. "But I'm not done."

"What is it?" Catherine asked.

"They've found survivors."


	6. Chapter 6

The most frustrating part about the news of crash survivors was not the possibility for false hope, or the lack of further information. Sara could be alive, if not well, or she could be dead and everything they were doing could be for naught. Even though the dichotomy of those possible outcomes was tearing at Grissom's soul, the fact that Jim Brass refused to let him drive to the crash site irritated him the most.

"Jim, what do you think I'm going to do, put us into a tree?" Grissom angrily buckled the seatbelt of the SUV.

"No," he replied. "I've just always wanted to drive this thing." Brass grinned as he tinkered with the lights and siren settings on the emergency panel. "Where's your radio?"

Grissom groaned as he pointed out the trinkets of the crime lab's primary vehicle to the detective, and shortly they were on the road, headed to the scene of the air crash. The driver and the passenger remained mostly silent during the trip; the background sounds of their sirens and the police frequency echoed between the glass windows. Even the radio traffic was at a minimum, detailing only the minor events of Las Vegas. Traffic stops and emergency calls were detailed in full, but the crash information had been withheld from the scanner.

"Nothing being put over the air?" Grissom asked.

"Nope," Brass replied. "Otherwise every scanner head and cracker jack in Clark County would be out there picking through pieces of fuselage to sell at the flea market. Not to mention, misunderstood information would spread like wildfire and start incredible rumors. I heard this one story about these cows…" Grissom put his hand up to stop the detective's story.

"Not in the mood, Jim. Another time."

"Okay." The two men continued to stare off down the road in silence. Within minutes, a cloud of smoke rose out of the Nevada landscape and guided them to the crash. A police cruiser, surrounded by flares, sat at the edge of the two-lane highway and directed the SUV down an unpaved road towards the smoke.

"Nice to see the red carpet rolled out…" Brass joked. Bemused, Grissom continued to stare forward out the windshield of the vehicle. The detective turned the SUV down the path and headed through the trees, following the path created by the emergency vehicles before them.

"See anything?" Brass asked as the two men leaned down to catch a glimpse of the night sky.

"There," Grissom pointed. The black smoke cloud hovered down over a crew of rescue workers. At least fifty vehicles, all with flashing lights illuminating the yellow-jackets and helmets, formed a large perimeter around an intact portion of an airplane. The rounded cabin had five busted windows on the side closest to Grissom, and he sighed in relief at the good state of that part of the wreckage.

"Well look at that," Brass mused. "Other than the windows, that piece looks pretty damn solid."

"Where's the rest of it?" Grissom asked. The SUV parked next to three deputy patrol cars, and they exited the vehicle as the rest of the team rolled up to their location.

"Damn," Warrick exclaimed, as he jumped out of the driver's seat of the blue Denali, and the rest of the team followed. "That part of the cabin doesn't even look like it's been in a crash!" Nick and Greg gushed about the sight before them, but Grissom walked off through the trodden land towards the nearest ambulance. Two medics stood outside the back of the rig. The taller one had a cell phone pressed to one ear and a finger jammed tightly in the other. The second, a young female, was pulling items out of a black carryall and looked up as Grissom approached.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Grissom pulled his lab I.D. card out of his pocket. "I'm Gil Grissom with the Vegas crime lab. I need to know the status of any survivors that were pulled from the wreckage."

"WHAT?" The girl yelled, and Grissom realized for the first time the high volume of noise at the site. Helicopters, sirens, radios, and phones were all vying for attention in the chilly Vegas night. He cleared his throat and stepped closer.

"I'm with the crime lab," he hollered. "I need to know about the survivors that were pulled out of the wreckage." The girl motioned to Grissom with a curled index finger, and he followed her into the back of the ambulance. He climbed up into the vehicle and sat on the bench while she shut the door, filtering out the sounds of the rescue squads.

"Hi," the girl greeted, "I'm Holly, what can I help you with?" Her voice was a bit too cheery to be that of a very young girl working a plane crash, and her ashen complexion was the only sign that she was shaken by the tragedy. Grissom cleared his tightened throat.

"I'm, uh, I'm looking for any information on the survivors from the crash, specifically…"

"Oh, yeah, I can tell you about that. I just can't give names, privacy rules and all. I'm sorry." Grissom looked up at her and felt a twinge in his heart.

"I'm sure you have all kinds of rules, but I'm with the crime lab. We're working to I.D. all the victims and I really need this information." Her eyes brightened.

"Oh! Yeah, of course. Sorry, I just haven't done this before. What all do you need to know?"

"Do you have any names or identifiers? I, uh…" Grissom's face shaded to green, and his voice trailed off. It was the closest he was to finding out if Sara was indeed a survivor, and part of him didn't want to know. The chances were still slim, and the tiniest bit of hope is more than he would have if she was already dead. The medic waited for him to continue before realizing that he couldn't.

"Sir," she asked, hesitantly, "are you looking for a person in particular?" _I ought to give her a job in the lab_, he thought, and nodded. She sighed, finally showing her nervousness in the situation. It would be hope for a lost soul or a death notification, and the despair in Grissom's darkened eyes created an uneasy sensation in her stomach. Grissom bit his lips.

"I… one of my employees was supposed to be on that flight. I just need to know if, uh, you know." Grissom could have kicked himself. Employee? She was so much more, but he thought asking on behalf of the lab could get him closer to finding Sara.

"Oh, ok," the girl said. "What's his name, and what does he look like?"

"His? Oh, I'm sorry, her name is Sara. She's got brown hair, slender, uh…" The girl frowned, and Grissom stopped mid sentence.

"Mr. Grissom, I'm so sorry," the medic told him. "Both survivors that we have located are male. Two white males in business class, we believe. One is stable, the other was not responding as well, but was breathing." Grissom felt the weight of a wrecking ball crash through his soul. Sara wasn't among the survivors of the plane crash, but she wasn't confirmed dead that he knew of.

She was still out there, somewhere.

"Thank you, I should get back to my team." The tears in Grissom's eyes threatened to fall, and the young medic smudged a sleeve to her own cheeks. She stared at the ground as Grissom climbed out of the ambulance and headed back towards the vehicles. Catherine met him halfway, placing her hand on his shoulder to walk him back.

"Anything?" He remained silent as they walked back towards the waiting group. Nick, who had been leaning back against the SUV, stood up in attention as the two approached.

"I talked to a medic," he stated, "and Sara isn't one of the survivors. She's still out there." Grissom lowered his head, and five other brows lowered to match. Nick inhaled sharply through his teeth and turned around to rest his elbows on the hood of the vehicle. He clasped his hands tightly and lowered his chin to his knuckles.

Catherine and Brass stood still and silent, focusing on the patchy grass at their feet. Greg's eyes, confused and panicky, darted between each of them, and they eventually pulled to the ground in mourning. Warrick dragged the knuckled of his thumb over the scruff on his chin and gritted his teeth, as if he was tempted to hit someone

Grissom raised a hand to his eyes in an attempt to hide his frustration, only to be interrupted by the increased shouting and hysteria behind him.

"What the hell?" Warrick started, and the group headed towards a huddle of firefighters.

"What's going on?" Grissom yelled as an emergency worker turned to face them.

"Another survivor!" he exclaimed, and they waited for the carried stretcher to approach. Grissom held his breath, silently praying that Sara was breathing and unbroken at the hands of the paramedics. Brass squeezed through the group, pulling his badge out of his jacket and pushed towards the rescue workers.

"Las Vegas Police," he yelled over the noise of the approaching life-flight helicopter. "I need to see this person; it will only take a second!" A firefighter on the side stepped back and allowed Brass to see the face. The detective focused on the head of the stretcher for a long, still second, expressionless in the flashing of the red-and-blue lights.

Grissom watched as Brass studied the person on the stretcher, finally looking up at the group. The two men stared at each other until Brass dragged his feet back over to the group.

"It's not her."


	7. Chapter 7

"It's not her," Brass repeated. Grissom didn't move for a moment, allowing the news to filter through him. He trusted Brass, but so many parts of him refused to believe it.

"How do you know? She's injured, you might not have recognize her." Brass shook his head.

"He's an Asian male. Unless there's something Sara hasn't been telling us…" Grissom shook off Brass's comment and broke free from the group. He needed air, he needed to breathe, and the smoke filled sky around the crash scene was suffocating him slowly. The tightening of his chest was accompanied by a dizzy spell that spun the lights around into a swirled mass of confusion. His knees buckled, and the last thing he heard was Nick and Warrick hurrying to catch him as he fell to the dusty land.

"Can we get a medic over here?!" Warrick cried, as they set Grissom to the ground. "Oh God… Grissom? Grissom, wake up." The two tapped his cheeks and rubbed his sternum through the cloth of the shirt, to no avail. Brass cursed and took off for a paramedic.

"Is he breathing? Nick, check his airway!" Catherine yelled, as Nick pushed all the others away and put his cheek to Grissom's face.

"He's breathing, but unconscious. Grissom, damn it, we aren't losing you too, man." He continued to check for the older man's pulse. "You saved my life, man, I'm not letting you get out this easy." A young woman ran up to the group and kneeled to the ground across from Nick.

"Mr. Grissom? Mr. Grissom? My God, he was fine just a little while ago…" Holly, the young medic, quickly pulled a stethoscope out of her bag and flung it around her ears. "What happened, sir?"

"What?" Nick asked, thrown off slightly by the formal address and still reeling Grissom's collapse.

"What happened? Does he have any kind of history of medical problems?" Nick shook his head.

"No, he just collapsed. He's under a lot of a stress; his girlfriend's missing in that plane and they haven't found her yet." Holly stopped and looked up at him.

"Your co-worker."

"Yeah." As she put an oxygen mask over Grissom's bearded face, they heard a muffled sound from the ground.

"Mr. Grissom, wake up. Do you know where you are?" More incoherent words followed, swallowed by the plastic mask and lost amidst the competition of the helicopter's engine as it flew away from the scene. The medic stretched the foggy mask slightly to expose his lips to the night air.

"Sara," Grissom mumbled. "Please… bring her…"

"We'll bring her home man, we promise." Nick's eyes began to water, and he realized that his promise did not extend to her being brought back alive. He remembered lying in the Plexiglas box, recording his final goodbyes, and the moment he accepted the fact that they would find him already gone. The agony of his parents burying their youngest son hurt him more than the ants. Knowing how horrified his friends and coworkers would be when they found his lifeless body permeated his mind. But he still felt incomplete, incompetent, and discouraged. He needed to find Sara, for her, and for Grissom.

"_Grissom… I never meant to disappoint you."_

"Nick…" Grissom cracked, and the young man leaned down to him. Holly pulled the mask away from the beard again. "You never disappoint me." Nick nodded, and a tear fell from his cheek and landed on the dusty collar of Grissom's shirt.

"I'll find her, Grissom. I will." Three medics rolled a stretcher and backboard towards the team, and they stood back and watched as Grissom, too weak to resist their treatment, was taken away. Physically, he needed the medical attention, but he was suffering from emotional wounds that were hurting him more.

"I'll go with him," Greg told them, still pale green from the dying hope. "I don't think I can go through that wreckage right now." Catherine opened her mouth to object, but closed it without words. Greg is probably right, she thought, and they let him walk off towards the ambulance without further discussion.

"Okay, let's get started." Brass slid his jacket off his shoulders and threw it on top of a squad car parked nearby. He rolled his sleeves up over his elbows as they walked towards the scattered remains of their tragedy.

II

"So," Greg whistled, "I doubt there is anything decent on television. Uh…" Greg's attempts at hospital conversation, while well intentioned, did nothing to alleviate the dark cloud that had settled over Grissom. He stared at the white walls and tacky wallpaper border in the room. It wasn't quite an emergency area, but he hadn't quite been admitted either. More or less, it was a holding area, holding him back from finding Sara.

The television, stationed on the wall in the center of the divided room, stayed dark. Fear of the media's coverage of the crash held Greg from even attempting to turn it on, and Grissom knew it. He didn't need to see it again. Just the thought of the wreckage and the burning fuel and the bodies…

"I don't need to be here," he sighed.

"They are just keeping you here for a couple tests. You gave us all a scare, I mean, what if you _and_ Sara…" Greg reddened and halted his words once he realized that talking about Sara would do nothing for Grissom's health.

"They're keeping me from her," Grissom whispered. His eyes shifted to the bed, grazing over the I.V. needle in his arm and the flimsy cotton gown that left him in a cold chill. The dizziness had subsided, but a throbbing ache had settled beneath his forehead. A heart monitor beeped next to the bed, creating an annoying pattern of tones that only aggravated his pain.

Greg thumbed the plastic armrests of the chair in impatience. Twelve hours ago, they were just pouring into the lab, a bit sleepy from a week of constant overtime and trying cases. Twelve hours ago, they laughed.

Twelve hours ago, Sara Sidle was alive and Gil Grissom was happy.

As the sun started to crawl into the window of the bleak hospital room, Grissom squinted his eyes and tried to sit up in the bed.

"This is taking too long," he said to the former lab rat, still tapping the arm rests of the chair. "I need to get out there."

"Whoa, whoa, lay back. You'll be out of here shortly, I promise. I'm sure one of them will call when they have something." Grissom sighed and leaned back against the shifted white sheet of the bed.

"I don't know what I'll do if I never see her face again." Greg stilled and looked up into Grissom's sad, vacant eyes. He opened his lips to speak some kind of encouragement, but Grissom's words continued to flow.

"The day I met her, she was so young, so young. I took her to a fast-food restaurant for lunch, and I thought I'd lost her right there. But we didn't even eat; our food was cold by the time we'd stopped talking and sharing stories. If I had any sense back then I would have taken her home and…" Grissom looked up at Greg and blushed, matching the wide-eyed and rosy expression on the slightly embarrassed young man. The story wasn't going where Greg _thought_ it was going, but the lesson was all the same.

"Sorry, Grissom, I just… uh, go ahead." Grissom smiled a little and nodded.

"It's ok. I took her that night to a botanical garden, to show her the different insects that lived among the plants. Over our heads was the most beautiful, clear, midnight sky that I had ever seen. We stopped at a small bench and stargazed for hours, until a security guard came along and told us to leave the park." Greg chuckled, and Grissom continued.

"I would give anything for that night back. I wish I could have saved all the stars in that sky. Sara's hair was much longer then, and it sparkled in the starry light. Then maybe, I could live that moment again. I would have just… done everything different."

"Grissom," Greg started, "it's just as impossible to save all the stars as it is to relive the past. You can only move forward. If it turns out that Sara died in that crash, you have to move on… for her. She'd want that."

"I know," Grissom whispered, and sniffled. "She would." A knock on the door startled them, and Jim Brass stepped in the door.

"Hey, how are you doing?" Brass asked, and stepped over to Greg. "Head back to the lab, we'll need you there." he whispered into Greg's ear, who nodded feverishly and slipped out of the room. Before shutting the door, the young man turned to face Grissom, who only stared at his fists in front of him. He shut the door, thinking of Sara and stars, and the most painful case he would ever work on.

"Did you find anything?" Grissom asked, more to the bed sheet than to Brass, again feeling the nervous tremble building from within. The detective only sighed and pulled Greg's still-warm chair towards the bed.

"Gil," he started, letting out another deep breath. "I just want to be the one to tell you that we didn't find any other survivors at the scene. About ninety victims were identified through I.D. cards and wallets, and that includes the entire flight crew. It wasn't as bad of a crash as we'd thought."

"Sara?" Grissom asked in a cracked voice.

"No," Brass replied. "The others will have to be identified through DNA, prints, or dental records. The lab is working on it right now. I sent Greg back; he's the best, you know." Grissom nodded. Brass sighed, a third time, and pulled a plastic bag out of the inside of the coat.

"Do you recognize this?" Brass held the bag out to Grissom, who retrieved it with the hand that didn't have a needle inside it. Inside the plastic bag was a small silver and black cell phone. It was cracked along the front cover, but otherwise, it was fully intact. Ignoring the typical desire to preserve prints, Grissom opened the bag and dumped the contents onto his lap.

"Gil," Brass asked, "is that Sara's phone?" He opened the cover and pressed the power button. Surprisingly, the phone's battery was intact and it was still fully functional. When the main screen loaded, Grissom scrolled through the options and read the screen.

_Dialed calls._

He pressed the lined button in the middle of the direction pad and stared at the name and number at the top of the list. A tear fell out of his eye, caressing his cheek and falling on the sheet below. The word took his breath.

_Grissom (10:34pm)_.


	8. Chapter 8

The cell phone slid from Grissom's hand and fell to the sheet bunched below. His eyes, hollow and dead, locked forward towards his feet. Before, even when he knew she had boarded the plane, there had been hope. Sara was always the fighter, always the survivor. Now, it was only time between that moment and when Greg identified her remains.

She had tried to call him. And what would have been the last words they shared ended up a text message, because he didn't answer his phone.

"Gil?" Brass asked, again. "That's Sara's phone?" Grissom merely stared ahead with a blank expression, having no more emotion left to control.

"She tried to call me." Grissom cracked, before picking the phone back up and placing it in the evidence bag. "I didn't answer, but she tried to…." Brass pulled his chin up, staring right at the ceiling above him to let the water pool in the corner pockets of his eyes. This was going to be hard for him, hard for the others, and damn near impossible for Grissom. The detective couldn't look at his friend; the man lost the one person who meant everything to him.

The two sat in relative silence, fighting back the tears, until the wooden door clicked open and a white coated doctor stepped into the room. He grinned solemnly, not due to Grissom's health, but out of reverence to his loss.

"Dr. Grissom, your tests look good. I'm going to go ahead and get the papers to let you go home. I understand tonight is an unusual situation, and other than the stress from this past evening you seem to be in good health." Grissom didn't answer him, and the doctor shifted uncomfortably.

"Thank you, sir," Brass said, standing to shake the doctor's hand before he left the room. "Looks like everything is…" Brass trailed off. Everything was not okay.

"I know," Grissom whispered, pinching his eyes shut in a last-chance attempt to hold back the salt-laden tears.

"I'll let myself out, and you can get dressed as soon as a nurse yanks those needles out of you." Brass stood up and left his friend without looking back. The door moved to close behind him, but a nurse brushed past into Grissom's room before it clicked into place. Brass waited, alternating between fidgeting with his dress coat and checking his phone, in wait of the message for the lab.

Within minutes, the nurse left the room, and Grissom followed soon after. His arms fumbled into the sleeves of the jacket while he tossed the bagged cell phone between his hands. Silence consumed them as they ambled down the hospital's maze of hallways, twitching at the scent of antiseptic all around them. Side by side, they wandered their way around corners until a bed in the hall gave Brass pause.

"Wait," Brass paused, grabbing Grissom's coat sleeve. The detective went up to the side of the rolling hospital bed, and leaned over the railing. "Sir, I'm Detective Jim Brass, from the Vegas police…" Grissom crinkled his eyebrows, confused at Brass's small talk with the patient.

"Yes," the voice from the bed croaked. "Yes, I remember you. You were there at the crash."

"I was," Brass smiled, and Grissom realized who he was talking to.

_It's not her. It's not her._ But it was him, the man they had carried from the wreckage. This man was a survivor from the crash that had stolen his heart and slammed it ruthlessly into the ground. For the first time in years, Grissom's soul began to fill with dire anger and hate. He hated that man for his survival, and he felt a tinge of rage at Sara for leaving him like this. Shame surrounded him.

_I wish I was like you, Grissom. I wish I didn't feel anything._

The words Sara had spoken to him years ago resonated in his mind, bringing his fists to clench tighter at every word. Maybe she had been right, in some sense. He felt drained and void of emotion, except for the cold bitterness normally kept buried so far inside.

"How are you doing, sir?" Brass asked, reaching out to touch the railing of the mobile hospital bed. The man grinned, unable to nod due to the thick white brace around his neck.

"Well," the survivor hoarsely replied. "I've been a lot better." Brass smiled at him.

"Hey, at least you've got your humor. Can I ask you something, and it's fine if you don't know, but we're looking for a woman that was on that plane. Tall brunette, kinda slender. Probably reading some sort of science journal…" The man scrunched his eyebrows together, trying desperately to conjure the memories of that evening.

"I, uh…" he stuttered. "I'm not quite sure. I remember getting on the flight and pretty much everything up until we started to fall." Brass held a hand up.

"Sorry, I don't want to bring up any bad memories. It's ok." The patient chuckled. Grissom stayed silent, but watched the two men converse with a vested interest.

"Ah, this isn't the first plane crash I've been in. I was a pilot for the U.S. Air Force for thirteen years. The worst one? Yes. But not the first. And now that you mention it, I do remember a woman. She was frantic about something, tried to call someone as we finished loading the overhead compartments." Grissom's head shot up immediately.

"About what time was that?" Grissom spoke up, surprising both the detective and the gentleman lying in the bed.

"Um," The man winced at the pain, "probably ten minutes before take off. Yeah. But then she threw the phone in the seat and walked towards the cockpit, or maybe the door." He scrunched his brow again. "Come to think of it, I didn't see her the rest of the flight. Maybe she got off the plane, lucky girl…" Grissom shot the look of surprise to Brass, and he reciprocated the look. Two long seconds, the men could only breathe through a silent shock. Whatever the reason, Sara could still be alive.

"Are you sure she got off the plane?" Grissom asked the man.

"No," he replied. "I didn't see her get off. She might have just been in the wrong aisle, I don't know. But she never came back towards where I was sitting." At that moment, a hospital transporter walked up to the man, and quickly unlocked the wheels.

"Thanks for your help, sir," Brass stated, as the bed began to roll away. "Hope your recovery goes well."

"You're welcome," the man hollered as he was ushered into a waiting elevator. Brass watched the man go, and wished he had at least asked for his name. By the time he turned around, however, Grissom had vanished.

"Gil! Wait up!" He jogged down the hallway, catching up with a desperate, running man who had nearly given himself a heart attack with the stress from the night. Brass couldn't catch him or protest, and Grissom jumped into the driver's seat of the SUV.

"How did you…" Brass panted. "How did you know it was parked along the sidewalk." Grissom grinned for the first time in a while.

"Cops never use the parking spaces." The detective chuckled. Grissom pulled out of the parking lot with an ear-pinching squeal of the tires. The sun had finished rising over the Las Vegas landscape, and the tar fumes had already begun to rise from the pavement. It was already a hot day in the city of sin.

Grissom couldn't tell if he was in hell or not. There was the renewed hope that Sara had not flown from New York to Vegas was the only thing keeping him from losing his mind, if he hadn't already lost it. It was entirely possible his sanity had already been lost. However, his training ordered him to follow the evidence, and it still ultimately supported the fact that Sara had been on that plane. Every part of him wanted to forget everything he had told himself about following the evidence.

All he wanted to believe was that Sara was alive.

"So," Brass whistled as the SUV rolled to a stop at a red light. "You're pretty crazy about Sara, huh?" _Is he reading my mind?_ Grissom thought. The tears had vanished from his stocky cheeks, as if his faith in Sara's survival had been restored.

"I guess you could say that." Grissom watched as the crossing traffic cleared and the light returned to green.

"How serious is it?" Grissom didn't look back to him, but he could feel the detective's eyes on him. Brass' eyes had stared down many suspects over the years. They didn't work on him anymore.

"I'm going to ask her to marry me, as soon as I find her." Brass chuckled under his breath. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing. She pregnant?" Grissom finally shot Brass a glare, causing him to shrug. "It's Vegas; you can have one of those quickie…"

"She's not… that I know of." An image of Sara holding a child flashed before his eyes, and it warmed him for some reason. It was better than the bloody and torn image of her in the wreckage of the plane. Still, children weren't something he had discussed with Sara, and the idea was actually kind of ridiculous.

They hadn't even discussed marriage yet.

Grissom breezed through another stoplight before pulling into the front parking lot of the lab. The hot air met them as they climbed from the vehicle and walked up to the lab. The day receptionist nodded at their credentials, and they continued down the hall.

"You sure you didn't want to go home first?" Brass asked. "I know, it's a little late now but you really do need a shower." Grissom twitched his lips as they approached the doors to the conference room. The doors were transparent, but the blinds were drawn and the lights off, leaving the room in a dim sunlight.

"Well," Brass sighed. "This seems to be the party." He reached for the black handle, pulled it open, and motioned for Grissom to precede him inside.

"Thanks," Grissom muttered. "Anything?" he asked, and his question was met by three distraught faces. A fourth, belonging to Greg Sanders, didn't move. His blond dreads were held tightly in his hands, and his elbows braced on the table.

Warrick's green irises were sore and pain-filled, much like they had been at the start of the evening. Red and blood-shot, Nick's eyes couldn't even focus on Grissom. The pity in Catherine's gaze was enough to draw Grissom's eyebrows into a questioning expression.

"What is it?" he asked, and Catherine pulled a piece of paper off the table and handed it to him.

"Gil," she sniffled, "this is the DNA results on a blood sample Greg ran. It was found on the door of the business class compartment." Grissom took the paper from her hand and turned it around. A line of numbers on the center of the page separated the words "Sample 1" and "Compliance". His eyes shifted to the bottom of the page.

_Sidle, Sara._


	9. Chapter 9

It was finally over.

"Just the blood?" Grissom asked, and his words came out half desperate, half angry, and wholly heartbroken. Catherine nodded as she placed her palm on his still-jacketed bicep.

"There's nothing else, not yet. She probably…" the blonde woman began to choke on her emotion. "She probably died in the fire." Grissom stared at the words on the page, the blues and reds and yellows of the printout blending together through his pain. A swabbed blood stain on a metal door was the only part of her left, and her name on the sheet was the end of their life together. Even in the air conditioned room, the fire of rage grew deep inside him, barreling to the surface. Ecklie couldn't provoke the anger that the proof of Sara's death had brought him. It was boiling over.

"GOD DAMMIT!" Grissom screamed and shredded the paper between his fingers before throwing it to the table. "No, this is… just no." Brass jumped towards the table and pulled a chair out, and between him and Catherine they managed to push Grissom down into the seat. It was unlike Grissom to have such an outburst with anyone but Ecklie, even if it was justified. Nick and Warrick, who had both jumped at the yelling, let out the short, sudden breaths they were holding, releasing the pressure that was pinning the tears inside. Catherine and Brass held tightly onto Grissom's shoulders, allowing him to breathe through the immediate pain

"Does Sara have family we need to contact?" Catherine had a pretty good idea when she asked, and her suspicions were confirmed by the silent shaking of Grissom's head. "Are you her power of attorney?" This time, she was met by a nod. She didn't ask him, and for that he was glad. Sara didn't have the family to take care of her affairs when she was gone, and although Grissom was honored to be asked, he hoped he would never have to use that authority.

All that hope was now shattered in the remnants of a 737, a flight carrying _his_ precious cargo and never made it home.

Inside, Grissom was hysterical.

Catherine and Brass continued to rest their palms on Grissom's shoulders with a sense of mourning. Greg's head still had not moved, and his face lingered over the pool of tears that had accumulated on the wooden surface. Nick and Warrick took him by his arms, letting the youngest CSI shake and weep for his lost friend. They sat in a mourning silence for a few long minutes, until Grissom cleared his throat of the prolonged sadness.

"I, uh…" he began, "I need to, I guess, God I don't know what I'm doing. Um, I guess I need to find out if there's any family, her mother…" Catherine stopped him.

"I'll get her file, and find out from the Feds when we can get a death certificate. If nothing else turns up, it might take a month or more." Grissom shuddered at her words, and Catherine gave his arm another quick squeeze before leaving the room.

The awkward and soothing silence returned until the door clicked shut, forcing the blinds to jingle against the glass.

"You three should probably get home, get some rest." Nick and Warrick looked up at him, and at each other, and then down at Greg (who still had not moved) before they nodded in agreement.

"C'mon, Greg," Nick pulled at the lab coat. "I'll drive you home." Warrick got off his chair and walked over to Grissom, following Nick and Greg to the door.

"Gris, if you need anything, you know where to find us." Warrick bit back another round of tears. "You aren't going to go through this alone, we'll be there."

"I appreciate it," Grissom whispered, and the three younger men left the room, leaving only the grieving entomologist and Jim Brass to fill the dim and silent room.

"Well," Brass heaved a sigh. "I'll get some stuff out of my office and I'll meet you at yours." Brass turned to leave.

"I'm not drinking over this, Jim. If I start I won't stop." Brass turned around, slightly shocked at Grissom's admission.

"You aren't an alcoholic, you're in grief. Gil, I know you. But we don't have to drink now." Grissom didn't reply. He dragged his hand across his beard twice before rising out of the chair. In the silence that was characteristic for the evening, they left the conference room, which was empty except for the tiny pool of Greg's tears that graced the table top.

The afternoon lab techs looked away, careful not to make eye contact with the disheveled pair as they walked down the hallway. It was the same careful avoidance they showed after Holly Gribbs died, and after the lab exploded. Their looks were the same when Nick was buried alive. As much as the people gossiped around the building, they turned away when confronted with the objects of their rumors.

Grissom unlocked the door of his office, walked in, and shut the door behind him, ignoring Brass's sympathetic stare from the hallway. He hated being the subject of pity, and his anger brought his fist in contact with the top of his desk as he rounded it. His cell phone, which hadn't left the desk since he called the airline, had a flashing message on it.

_1 missed call._

She could have called him, she could have. He pulled open the screen and saw that his ray of hope had been dashed by Ecklie's rare concern and nosiness. _Damn_, he thought, and dropped the phone onto a book resting on the edge of the desk. His head found its way into his hands, and he pinched his eyes tightly shut.

Somewhere in the middle of his thoughts of memorial services and officers carrying a coffin and a cold, empty bed, three quick rasps echoed from the door.

"Come in, Brass." Grissom never moved his gaze from the desk, and the door opened. Out of the top of his line of sight, he could see two brown-shoed feet from the doorway.

"Told you I was going to bring the party." Brass chuckled, and Grissom's head shot up.

"You know, Jim, I'm not really in the mood…" Grissom trailed off as Brass stepped back, and a different pair of feet stepped into view.

"Grissom…" He jumped out of his chair and circled the desk, and practically ran towards the door. _I'm dreaming_, he thought_, please God don't let me be dreaming._

"Sara, oh God." She took two steps into his office and met him just inside the frame of the door. "How, I just… oh thank God." Grissom looked her over, touched her cheek to feel the warmth, and pulled her body to his. Sara's body began to shiver with sobs.

"I'm so sorry, so sorry. I didn't know…" she managed to tell him, as her tears soaked through Grissom's wrinkled shirt.

"I know," he choked out, bringing his own watery eyes back to life. "I know, oh thank God. I don't know what I…" His words trailed off as he ran his hands desperately through the strands of brown hair. They clutched on to each other until the tears dried up, and she pulled herself away from him, reluctantly.

"Honey," Grissom asked, "how did this happen? You were on that plane." She nodded, looking around for something to wipe her nose on. Grissom smiled, and grabbed a napkin sitting on top of a file cabinet. Sara sniffled into it and cleared her throat.

"I got on the plane and I couldn't find my planner. I hadn't really used it while I was there so I thought maybe I hadn't brought it, so I called you." Grissom nodded.

"For some reason, I didn't hear the call. Or it didn't go through. I did get your message that you were leaving."

"Yeah, so I asked if I could run back and check the seat in the terminal, and they said okay as long as a security guard went with me. Well, when I was getting of the plane my hand slid across the door…" She held up her mucus-free hand, which Grissom realized for the first time was wrapped in a thick white bandage. "Pretty much reopened the scar from the lab explosion."

"That's why your blood was on the door." Grissom pulled her injured hand into his, gently, and rubbed the gauze with his thumb.

"I didn't know about the crash. I took the next flight back and then just went home. I had the scanner on, wondering where you were. I was going to surprise you, I'm so sorry…." Sara's eyes began to shed tears again, and he pulled her close. "I didn't know about the crash until Ecklie knocked on the door."

"Ecklie?" Grissom asked incredulously, his eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

"He knocked on the door and I thought he was going to throw up when he saw me. At first, I knew why. Then he told me there had been an accident, and I needed to get to you." Grissom smiled and reminded himself to thank Ecklie later.

"I thought something bad happened to you," Sara continued, "only to find out that everyone thought it had happened to me." He decided not to go into the hospital issue, at least not at that time.

The team had congregated around Brass at the doorway, watching nosily as Grissom and Sara embraced their reunion. After a few heartwarming moments, she was passed around for hugs and wet cheek kisses. Grissom watched as the woman who made his life whole smiled and laughed and _breathed_ in front of him. The pain and agony of the past day had vanished, replaced only by joy and love.

"By the way," Sara asked, as Greg finally let go of her, "Did someone find my cell phone?"

II

Sara couldn't see anything but darkness. Mostly, the red handkerchief over her eyes blocked her vision, but she could tell there was a significant lack of light where they were.

It had been three weeks since the horrific plane crash. In that time, Sara had helped the rest of the team identify the victims from the accident, bringing closure to the loved ones who had lost a part of themselves. She went with Greg to the wreckage site to bring flowers to the memorial. As he read the names and cards, she watched his compassion and vowed to never let Greggo lose his sense of humanity.

In three weeks, she watched Grissom learn to get along with Ecklie. Although she knew in three more weeks they would forget about this incident and go back to hating each other.

And three weeks after the crash, Grissom told Sara they were going on vacation. By car, naturally.

"Are you going to take off the blindfold?" she asked.

"In a second. Just sit right here." Grissom pushed her shoulders down, and Sara felt hard slats of wood under her thighs.

"I'm definitely on a bench." Grissom mumbled something, and untied the handkerchief, letting it fall into her hands.

"Grissom! This is that botanical garden!" He smiled as he sat down next to her on the wooden bench. "We came here after that seminar and the fast-food and…" Grissom cut her off with a quick brush to her lips, pulling back only to see her eyes shine in the starry light.

"I needed to bring you here. I needed to do this right." Grissom's hands shook slightly as he pulled from his jacket pocket a small box, slightly dusty from the desk drawer, and presented it to her. "Sara, I…" She cut him off and grabbed his bearded cheeks. Her lips sank into his mouth, leaving Grissom with the box still awkwardly sitting in his hand.

He never actually asked her. And she never actually answered. Grissom knew that he wouldn't be able to put his love for her into one question, or define it with one quote. He'd never be able to explain to her the agony of thinking that he'd never see her again. His voice couldn't echo all the things he wanted to tell her, and that was okay.

Their story had been written in the stars.

_end_


End file.
